By Dominic Rupprecht
Men are the new minority on college campuses. At Bucknell the disparity is small: 51 percent of campus is female, while 49 percent is male. However, as shocking as it may be, even though there are a million more men than women ages 18 to 24 in America, men make up a mere 42.6 percent of students enrolled in college nationwide. And, according to USA Today, the gap is growing.
While these numbers may be encouraging to Bucknell's men as they head downtown on Friday night, on the whole the trend is disturbing.
Men are not, however, merely a minority in numbers. Manhood as an idea is hardly celebrated on campuses. Instead, masculinity is treated as something shameful. Men are labeled violent. Film series at Bucknell are dedicated to deconstructing the traditional notion of manhood. Fraternity brothers are stereotyped as ticking time bombs of sexual assault. The male minority is deemed the architect of a patriarchal conspiracy.
Over the past few decades colleges have built up Women's Resource Centers and other "safe havens" and "supportive environments" for women on college campuses. These centers, including Bucknell's, have been used to address perceived injustices and help women gain a foothold in higher education. Congress also created laws intended to level the playing field, like Title IX.
However, while Title IX has been used almost exclusively to fix inequalities faced by women, it was not written as a women's equity law, but rather a gender equity law. Taking a close look at the legislation, it seems evident that Title IX should require a shocking move from Bucknell: the elimination of our Women's Resource Center.
According to Title IX of the 1972 Education Amendments to the 1963 Equal Pay Act, "No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance."
There is a common misconception that Title IX only relates to women in sports. However, Title IX addresses any federally funded educational program or activity (and because Bucknell receives federal funds it must comply). The text of the law never even mentions the word "athletics" or "sports." Instead, it defines a program or activity as "all the operations of a college, university, or postsecondary institution."
Certainly a resource center is an operation of the University. Moreover, it seems evident that when the text of Title IX explicitly requires institutions with father-son events to also have mother-daughter events, then institutions boasting a Women's Resource Center ought also to provide a Men's Resource Center.
According to today's interpretation of Title IX, however, this is not the case. When asked why, the Department of Education Office for Civil Rights defended the principle of Women's Resource Centers saying the centers must actively bar men before they can be considered exclusionary under Title IX.
Bucknell's general counsel, Wayne Bromfield, reaffirmed this, noting, "No person at Bucknell is excluded from participation in the programs and activities of the Women's Resource Center." In fact, he suggested that the WRC would like men to "feel motivated to attend and partake of the programs and resources."
At first glance this position seems reasonable. Interim WRC Director, Dean Badal, is a fabulous person and she wouldn't discriminate against men.
However, we are dealing with a Women's Resource Center, whose mission is to: "Work toward the feminist goal of affirming the dignity of all women and empowering them to control their own life choices." Through a variety of co-curricular supportive services, educational, cultural, and social programs, we try to address the needs of women on campus.
One cannot deny that this mission, at the very least, discourages men from seeking "affirmation" and "co-curricular supportive services" and more likely makes them believe that they are not welcome to request these things.
Calling it a "Women's" Resource Center doesn't help matters much either. Common sense tells us if it was meant for women and men, it would be called a Student's Resource Center.
Put simply, there is a de facto denial of benefits for men, even if there isn't a large field hockey player standing at the door ready to club us in our patriarchal organs.
Moreover, it is likely that men have in fact been physically excluded from at least one WRC event. In the spring of 2005 the SIRENS sponsored an event titled "That Takes Ovaries," where the attendees- yes, you guessed it- needed ovaries.- However, the event was held at Uptown, which requires a trained employee to monitor its expensive sound equipment.
The only available employee was a man. However, then-WRC Director Molly Dragewicz forced him to stand outside the building (the student involved believed that the WRC was a sponsor of the event, but the WRC and president of the Feminist Majority - formerly SIRENS - refused to confirm or deny that fact). There were, "No Boys Allowed."
Whether it is through implication or outright expulsion, the male minority population is "denied the benefits" of the WRC, and thus the equal opportunities mandated by the Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights.
In spite of this, the law has allowed this disparity to continue. However, if Bucknell wanted to comply with the spirit of Title IX, then the WRC ought to be eliminated.
Elimination of the WRC would not be a novel approach to achieving Title IX compliance. In 2001, the University made the "difficult" decision to eliminate varsity wrestling. The stated reason for the change was an effort to comply with the "substantial proportionality" requirements in Title IX. Simply put, at the time 48.5 percent of the Bucknell student body was female, and only 47.1 percent of participants in varsity athletics were female. This was deemed too great a disparity, and varsity wrestling was eliminated in an effort to correct the imbalance.
If a 1.4 percentage point disparity (which is legally acceptable) could result in the elimination of a popular varsity sport, then a 49 percentage point disparity in opportunities for "supportive services and educational, cultural, and social programs� must be addressed.
That is, the Women's Resource Center appears to be in flagrant violation of the fundamental principles of Title IX and ought to be eliminated to bring balance to the opportunities made available on campus.
However, while the legal reasons may not be clear - they are certainly unclear to this author - the practical reason there is a WRC and no MRC is obvious. Even as men continue to fall behind in higher education, and drop-out rates in high school and college for men continue to rise, patronizing college administrators continue to view women as a weak class in need of protection, while men are ignored completely.
The statement is: boys just don't matter as much as girls. If you're a male who was sexually assaulted (and according to campus stats for every two women sexually assaulted there are 1.14 men) you don't matter as much as the woman. If you're a male with an eating disorder (for every four women with anorexia there is one male according to the American Journal of Psychiatry) you don't matter as much as the woman.
It is profoundly perverse that we have a resource center devoted to helping a significant majority on campuses nationwide and promote a set of views that dominate academia.
To address this problem, a leveling effect ought to be applied. No special privileges for women and no special privileges for men. Equality is what common sense, and the law, requires.
The arguments against a WRC are plentiful. We all know the Women's Resource Center is inherently silly. Moreover, it violates the spirit, if not the letter, of Title IX.
Dominic Rupprecht is president of the Bucknell University Conservatives Club in Lewisburg, Penn.
This article appeared in The Counterweight, Bucknell's monthly conservative magazine.